Love MD but hate the ending

Love MD but hate the ending

I remember most, if not all, of Lynch's previous films have had an uplifting ending (although not always obvious).This one just ends in unhappiness. What is going on here?

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 9:17 am

by garethw

Roger wrote:I just re-watched the film and have to say I REALLY hate that ending.

I remember most, if not all, of Lynch's previous films have had an uplifting ending (although not always obvious).This one just ends in unhappiness. What is going on here?

It really is pretty bleak. Not sure if it's alone in Lynch's work in being so, though. Lost Highway? The Twin Peaks finale? Even FWWM - while Laura gets what she wants, what she wants is terribly tragic.

Nice to have a new voice on this board, Roger. Hope you stick around!

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 10:38 am

by Roger

garethw wrote:It really is pretty bleak. Not sure if it's alone in Lynch's work in being so, though. Lost Highway? The Twin Peaks finale? Even FWWM - while Laura gets what she wants, what she wants is terribly tragic.

OK yeah Lost Highway maybe not a happy ending either, but it sure was exciting. Twin Peak series - True, not so good for Cooper and a few others. (I think the cancelling of the series had something to do with that though.)

TP:FWWM - Not the best way to get there, but Laura is finally released and happy.Elephant Man kinda like TP:FWWMStraight Story - happyDune - happy for the non-political people. They finally get a decent leader that leads them to peace.Blue Velvet - happyEraserhead - Henry is happyWild At Heart - happy

For the most part I always felt Lynch brought you through a dark journey and eventually to happiness at the end.

garethw wrote:Nice to have a new voice on this board, Roger. Hope you stick around!

Thanx for the welcome. As long as there are interesting conversations going on I'll try to be here. And on a David Lynch board that shouldn't be too hard.

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 10:59 am

by Gruff

Ja, the ending is pretty bleak but interesting how Lynch, in the interviews on MD sees the 'traumatic ending' as a beautiful thing. It's interesting how we can look at the entire project as a traumatic experience for the filmmaker himself. Lynch intended the story for TV but that remained in an incomplete form until the film was completed. Lynch seems to craft his narratives in a kind of loop where the end feeds into the beginning making the narrative more complete than is 1st apparent. Traditional narratives are often open-ended leaving the audience open to experience a kind of trauma in resolving the loose ends. It seems Lynch overcomes this kind of trauma by crafting the film narrative as a complete whole. Some of my favourite Lynch films has this narrative quality. It's traumatic but then then you learn to see the beauty in it. I'm still not sure how beautiful the ending is but it resonates with my experience in life, I think. I feel the ending of MD brings a sense of release to me these days. It's like you're almost ejected out of this Lynchian dream world and left gasping 'Woah', often followed by a 'What the hell?'.

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2011 3:04 pm

by silenthiller119

I personally found the ending devastating as well, but I don't believe all movies have to end happily. I know a lot of Lynch's movies have "happier" endings, but I guess it's also how you interpret the endings as well.

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 12:57 pm

by forgiveness

Yes the ending is very sad to me as well. I feel so sorry for Diane, despite the mistake she made. She really did deserve so much more than Camilla. The image of Betty and Rita laughing and smiling just depresses me terribly and my sister feels the same way.

And, yes, a lot of Lynch's endings are happy. Except I would add Blue Velvet to the list of uncertain ones. I really do feel that while she is reuninted with her son, Dorothy did love Frank and longs for him still.

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 9:47 pm

by perno

Is the end really sad ? I wonder ?

At the end, isn't she free ? Diane has made something horrible. She pays the price and, leaving this world, she reminds only the good time, leaving behind her all her sins and the last few weeks that were just... awfull.

For Blue Velvet, there's a happy end but I still wonders what lies beneath the grass while the family is reunited...

For me, one example of "not so good end" is Lost Highway. Does it really end ?Fred doesn't seem to be free after what he's done...

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:56 pm

by Roger

forgiveness wrote: And, yes, a lot of Lynch's endings are happy. Except I would add Blue Velvet to the list of uncertain ones. I really do feel that while she is reuninted with her son, Dorothy did love Frank and longs for him still.

I don't see that at all.

perno wrote:Is the end really sad ? I wonder ?

At the end, isn't she free ? Diane has made something horrible. She pays the price and, leaving this world, she reminds only the good time, leaving behind her all her sins and the last few weeks that were just... awfull.

I just felt she was miserable, couldn't handle it any more, and took her own life. Couldn't she have done something else to solve her situation? Totally sad ending.Laura Palmer on the other hand didn't straight up commit suicide... although she did let herself be taken. It was sad but it felt more of a release for her as she was completely trapped in her life and had no other way out.

perno wrote:For me, one example of "not so good end" is Lost Highway. Does it really end ?Fred doesn't seem to be free after what he's done...

I agree. There is no ending. Fred is still on the run from himself and everyone else. But all in all it fits the movie.I don't think you can say this is a unhappy ending either.

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 11:38 am

by forgiveness

perno wrote:Is the end really sad ? I wonder ?

At the end, isn't she free ? Diane has made something horrible. She pays the price and, leaving this world, she reminds only the good time, leaving behind her all her sins and the last few weeks that were just... awfull.

For Blue Velvet, there's a happy end but I still wonders what lies beneath the grass while the family is reunited...

For me, one example of "not so good end" is Lost Highway. Does it really end ?Fred doesn't seem to be free after what he's done...

Yes that is true. Still I am left with the feeling that Diane somehow is the blue haired lady at Club Silencio and that she is still trapped in her sadness. But yes she did escape the guilt that drove her to take her own life.

Lost Highway is a sad ending but I never quite felt as sorry for Fred as I do for Diane so it doesn't depress me so much.

Roger wrote:

forgiveness wrote: And, yes, a lot of Lynch's endings are happy. Except I would add Blue Velvet to the list of uncertain ones. I really do feel that while she is reuninted with her son, Dorothy did love Frank and longs for him still.

I don't see that at all.

The first time I saw "Blue Velvet" I felt that Dorothy was in love with Frank and that the end was somewhat melancholy for all it's sunniness. Then I read something that supported this.

To quote Dennis Hopper:"And at the end of the movie, in those last images, there's the shot of Dorothy - she's sitting in some park with her little son in her arms. David's intention ' 'cos he told me this ' is to let the viewer know that it's not over, she's still thinking about Frank, still longing for him. Frank's dead but she'll always love him."

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2014 12:39 pm

by erniesam

I experience the ending of MD with mixed feelings. I wouldn't say it is depressing in the literal sense of the word, but on the other hand it is indeed sad and tragic when you look at it as a whole. Let me explain.

I guess many people have different interpretations of the ending and of MD as a whole. Many people seem to agree that Diane has had Camilla killed literally and that's why she commits suicide: out of guilt. I do not view MD this way. I take everything we see as metaphorical. I will not go into detail about this at this moment. I guess it is sufficient to say that I view the hit on Camilla as metaphorical, meaning that Camilla is not dead. It is obvious the blue box contains something Diane fears, but...it is not the image of Camilla we see appearing from it, but that of the elderly couple. My take is that this is the couple that have sexually abused Diane, at least the old man. I'm not sure this would be her parents or her grand parents. It could be that her parents died and she was raised by her grand parents or...that her grand parents died and Diane was abused by her parents. In the rehearsal we hear about "My dad being up stairs" which I translate as her dad or grand dad being in heaven / dead. Since her co-star in that rehearsal could indeed be her grand dad I tend to believe Diane was abused by her grand parents.

Anyway, the fact that this elderly couple appears from within the blue box, this would indicate that Diane fears them more than anything. It's not the so called "murder" of Camilla that is haunting Diane, but the sexual abuse from her youth. She is trying to escape this by trying to make it in Hollywood. Lynch is picturing Hollywood here literally as "escapism." So Diane never realy learned how to cope with her inner demons that being the sexual abuse so the only way she knows is to run. In the end she sees no escape but to shoot herself. This in itself is very tragic indeed, but to Diane it also is a wonderful escape: at last she has peace and all the characters from her fantasy blend together. At last "silencio."

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2014 10:31 am

by moviemaker

forgiveness wrote:

perno wrote:Is the end really sad ? I wonder ?

At the end, isn't she free ? Diane has made something horrible. She pays the price and, leaving this world, she reminds only the good time, leaving behind her all her sins and the last few weeks that were just... awfull.

For Blue Velvet, there's a happy end but I still wonders what lies beneath the grass while the family is reunited...

For me, one example of "not so good end" is Lost Highway. Does it really end ?Fred doesn't seem to be free after what he's done...

Yes that is true. Still I am left with the feeling that Diane somehow is the blue haired lady at Club Silencio and that she is still trapped in her sadness. But yes she did escape the guilt that drove her to take her own life.

Lost Highway is a sad ending but I never quite felt as sorry for Fred as I do for Diane so it doesn't depress me so much.

Roger wrote:

forgiveness wrote: And, yes, a lot of Lynch's endings are happy. Except I would add Blue Velvet to the list of uncertain ones. I really do feel that while she is reuninted with her son, Dorothy did love Frank and longs for him still.

I don't see that at all.

The first time I saw "Blue Velvet" I felt that Dorothy was in love with Frank and that the end was somewhat melancholy for all it's sunniness. Then I read something that supported this.

To quote Dennis Hopper:"And at the end of the movie, in those last images, there's the shot of Dorothy - she's sitting in some park with her little son in her arms. David's intention ' 'cos he told me this ' is to let the viewer know that it's not over, she's still thinking about Frank, still longing for him. Frank's dead but she'll always love him."

I agree, Blue Velvet is not a happy ending. I would add that being a true surrealist David Lynch gives you a very manufactured ending right down to the fake Robin, whether that was out of necessity or by design. Even Jeffrey on the lawn chair is waking from what? A dream? In fact that scenes starts with a close up of an ear. His ear, as we come out to his world. Both the opening and closing of that film is manufactured, but from whose POV? Jeffrey's? Not saying it didn't happen but it's all told from a specific POV. This is what makes Blue Velvet so brilliant and so unsettling. It is like a dream. Many times in the film it goes from one scene to the next but doesn't logically make sense (which I won't give examples here). And of course in the original script Jeffrey was supposed to be raped by Frank but Lynch changed it. Even if he wasn't, at the end the whole family acts as if nothing happened. They have gone back to their very comfortable, some would say naive way of life, as if the darkness was but a dream. The shot of Dorothy with her son is in slow motion as if it's a memory, or thought, or a dream of what might be happening. And Dorothy's son is wearing that party hat with the propellor that Jeffrey found in Dorothy's apartment. You actually think she retrieved the hat and put it on her kids head? Maybe. Maybe not. It's all manufactured and for a reason. I'm not giving answers just clues like a good mystery.

But my biggest question is why is an uplifting ending considered a "good" ending. I feel the best ending is the one most "appropriate" for the characters in the story and not just what's visually on the surface, but how it makes you feel in the end.

I bet MD made you feel something in the end. Loss? Sadness? Anger? Relief?

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2016 5:41 am

by writersblock

I always feel that David Lynch films always end in either a happy or unhappy ending depending on your mood while you are watching. Some days I could watch Blue Velvet and think that is a happy ending... and then other times they way the characters must have been changed by the events of the movie and their attempts at continuing their lives in the way they are accustomed to make me feel terribly sad. I should probably just chill a little bit.

I have never ever seen Fire Walk With Me as anything other than a happy ending, though. Strange.

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2016 6:41 pm

by Snailhead

The last 30 minutes of Mulholland Drive is by far my favourite section of the film. Many disparate elements from the first two thirds come together beautifully. It's very tragic, but I couldn't imagine a more satisfying ending.

Re: Love MD but hate the ending

Posted: Sun May 29, 2016 4:10 am

by Gabriel

You see, maybe I'm too impatient, but for me MD was two thirds marvellous (basically the original TV material) followed by 40 minutes of nonsense. When the film took its 'volte face' I accepted it for about ten minutes, thinking 'I doubt it'll go on much longer.' Twenty minutes in, I was thinking 'I hope it doesn't go on much longer.' Thirty minutes later, I was thinking 'God help us!' At the end I just thought: 'Oh well! I can't like everything David Lynch does!'